During 2019, the Klein-Wallace house was stabilized. Attention is now turning to the John Mallory House. This house is a galvanized metal building with one window and one door built above the antebellum root cellar for the caretaker of Klein during the 40’s and 50’s. With relatively few repairs, it can provide a window into the Jim Crow era, as well as the antebellum period. The next major undertaking will be the building of a visitor center/residency. It will house bathroom facilities, be climate controlled, and have internet access.

We understand history to be complicated and in flux, changing as we more fully understand the narratives that have been erased. Thus, as an educational space, we need your help creating interpretative materials, a library, educational videos, and a viewing area. The Klein Descendants Speak project is one effort that we have just begun.

Klein Arts & Culture is in conversation with several local universities about serving as a site for internships in cultural heritage and museum studies, a space for visual arts and writing students to experience an historical space of contested narratives and a source for students in historical preservation. An eventual goal may be to establish a residency program linked with a university.

We are also in discussion with local school writing and history programs to bring middle and secondary school students to Klein as part of the curriculum.

These partnerships will require professional resources and management, as well as equipment and supplies.

Central to Klein Arts + Culture’s mission is a series of art exhibitions that deal with the South and its many histories and peoples. You can support this mission with production materials, exhibition promotion expenses, and helping to cover artist and curator fees, making Klein a nationally recognized center for art. 

Help us organize the conversations around homecoming by providing food, drink, support, or time. These homecomings are the heart of Klein’s mission to bring people together and they happen annually, in October.